The UK's gender pay gap — the difference in how much men and women are paid hourly on average — rose from 19.7% in 2014 to 20.8% in 2015, the biggest increase of any Europe's main economies.
The latest figures show the UK's gap was bigger than the EU's average pay gap, which stood at 16.3%, and the UK performed fifth worst for gender pay equality of all the major European economies. Germany was third worst, at 22% in
2015, while the Czech Republic's gap was about 23% and Estonia's was about 26%.
According to EU figures, the gap is equivalent to women continuing to work for the remainder of the year but not being paid after early November.